By Tom Levy –
When you look at me,
You don’t know me.
I survived school yard bullying.
I was humiliated for knowing more than they did.
I was accused of killing Christ.
I was beaten for having a 5000-year-old last name.
My people fled Europe and Russia,
Burrowed into New York and San Francisco,
Shed their Yiddish and Russian and Polish and Prussian skins,
Gave up what they were ready to leave behind,
Threw away what no one had ever let them forget.
They let the melting pot
Cook off their skins,
What Hitler’s henchmen would dearly have loved
For a lampshade.
They tried to become those colorless white people
We all love to hate.
Many of my relatives are transparent.
Glowing golden arches the only light shining through them.
They don’t know who they are.
Their ancestors’ pain is invisible to them,
But not to me.
There was a time I was ready to give up my name.
Ready to tear off my second-hand skin.
I was growing up in generic America.
But someone inside of me was suffocating.
Someone inside of me was crying.
Someone inside of me was wrestling with a Messenger
whose message I could not comprehend.
Someone inside of me was wandering in a desert for 40 years.
Someone inside of me was tearing the place apart.
Someone inside of me was careening through midnight streets on a drunk.
Decades of depression and melancholy passed
Till my Jewish soul dared to speak.
Till I heard the whispers.
Till I let the voice creep into my ear.
Decades before I could make out the words,
Burning in black fire,
And written on white fire.
In high school
the Good News Christians tried to convert me.
Tried to save me from hell.
Their prayers were hell enough.
Their answers so neatly formed,
Soap bubbles,
They burst at the slightest touch of doubt.
I cursed the first rabbi who gave me a child’s textbook.
How could this be the answer to my questions?
For his trouble I gave him a photograph
Showing him at the bimah,
smiling, clueless.
In those days
My anger blinded me.
Anger was the prayer shawl I wore.
Anger was the dreidel I spun.
Anger was the wine I blessed.
Anger was the lulav I waved.
Anger was the kippah I wore.
Anger was my tefillah.
No, I won’t let you tear off my Jewish skin.
No, I won’t let you break my Jewish bones.
I’m not that thing you think you know.
I’m never what you think you see.
I’m made of glowing Jerusalem stone
Shining like dawn across the Dead Sea.
I’m made of braided challah,
Torn and consumed, one piece at a time.
I’m made of lambskin parchment covered in black text
And stretched around the inside of a shul.
I’m made of desert quiet where we have listened,
and heard,
for centuries.
I hate white bread.
It makes my stomach churn.
Give me some Russky xleb.
Dark, pungent, smoky-smelling bread
Of rye and wheat
That fights back when you chew it.
I can’t stand boy bands.
They afflict me like irritable bowel syndrome.
Give me a screaming clarinet playing a klezmer freylakh
That bends into a jazzy riff off some Hasidic melody
Singing of pain and joy,
A lament
That to me is a lullaby.
Pesach circles around the tables
Pushed together to make room
For all
Including Eliyahu.
Open the door
And welcome in the hungry stranger.
I walked in the door,
Hungry.
They fed me.
My Jewish friend fed me.
My wife fed me.
My mother fed me.
My sisters fed me.
My father fed me.
My gay, Chinese, Jewish cousin fed me.
My cantor’s songs fed me.
My Honolulu rabbi fed me.
I gave myself permission to sit at the table.
I gave myself permission to be dumbfounded by my ignorance.
I gave myself permission to hum along with siddur songs I didn’t know.
I gave myself permission to let the Hebrew wash over me like an aural mikveh.
I gave myself permission to wear my farbrent like a fiery tallis of flop sweat.
I walked in wearing my colorful Uzbekish kippah,
picked up a siddur, sat down
And faked my way through Kabbalat Shabbat
Until I began to feel
Began to feel
Began to feel
Began to feel
Began to feel
At home.
Do you know who came before you?
Find out.
Then celebrate them, sing them, wear them.
When you look at other people,
Remember,
Their skin is an illusion.
You don’t know who they are.
Ask them.
And listen.
Tom Levy is a fourth-generation San Franciscan living in Oakland, California. He is a writer and former photojournalist.
